Original subtitles

Tonight, one of the most shocking murders in mob history, the Valentine's

Massacre.

On February 14th, 1929, seven men from Bugs Moran's infamous gang are lined

up against a wall and executed.

There's 70 shots fired.

Bugs Moran was supposed to be in that meeting, and he never came.

And then he sat back in the wings and watched what happened.

This level of violence was off the charts.

The 1920s and 30s are full of gangland murders.

But the Valentine's Day Massacre will go down as both the most brutal and

toughest to solve.

They published incredibly gruesome images of this violence.

And there's this immediate public outcry for justice. People want to know who

did this and to see them brought in. But no one can really figure it out.

Now, we explore the top theories surrounding the Valentine's Day

The person with the most to gang when it comes to the death of Moran and the

gutting of his gang is obviously Al Capone.

He's quite direct.

He says gangsters did not do this.

Cops did it.

If this were a revenge killing over the son of a police officer, it would make

sense why officers would then look the other way.

Even though we're approaching a century since the Valentine's Day Massacre, it

is still one of the coldest cases in American history.

Who carried out the Valentine's Day Massacre, and why did they do it?

January 16th, 1920, Chicago, Illinois.

It's a Saturday night, and as midnight draws near, bar patrons take their last

sips of legal alcohol.

When the calendar flips, America is officially going drunk.

The Volstead Act, the dreaded 18th Amendment, which has been brewing since

Industrial Revolution hit the United States, and suddenly everybody's working

40 -hour work week. And alcohol is being blamed for absenteeism, tardiness.

It's also, more importantly, being blamed for violence that men rain down

women.

Prohibition is seen as a Christian cure -all for American bad behavior.

They believe that this can end domestic violence, it can end poverty.

This is something they believe will make the nation healthier, wealthier, and

safer.

As the clock winds down on prohibition, you have kind of two energies taking

hold of the American populace. You both have temperance advocates who are so

excited that this new, more moral age in America is about to dawn. Then you have

people who are ruining the fact that alcohol will no longer be available

legally. And they're basically getting drunk on that last night. People talk

about it as America's last call.

There's no better way to create demand than to tell someone they can't have

something. And essentially what the government did is they immediately

demand for alcohol that could not be satisfied any other way than through

illegal means.

And that was what the mob was built for. They were able to slip in and

immediately start putting together networks of buying and selling alcohol

providing it to people.

In this prohibition era, Chicago finds itself as a real hub. It's a big city.

It's centrally located for distribution purposes.

There's already a kind of notoriously corrupt law enforcement system.

And so all of this is kind of the perfect storm for it to be the place

Capone makes his name.

Al Capone becomes the most important mob boss and the most important bootlegger

in Chicago.

He's actually Brooklyn -born. He moves to Chicago around 1920, and he takes

is already a pretty well -run gang, and he turns it into a

million -dollar, money -making powerhouse.

By some accounts, Al Capone's operation brings in...

$100 million a year, about $1 .7 billion in today's money.

There were actually two rival gangs at this time that were really vying for

everyone's attention. There was the Chicago Outfit run by Al Capone and the

Northside Crew, which was run by George Bugs Moran.

Bugs Moran earned the nickname Bugs.

Because he was very violent, he was very volatile, and they kind of thought he

wasn't all there. He was just kind of buggy.

While Capone rules Chicago's South Side, Moran maintains a stronghold on the

North Side.

And by 1926, their rivalry turns into an all -out war.

Bugs Moran and Al Capone couldn't stand that one might be growing faster than

the other. And before long, we see Al Capone looking over his shoulder. In

he has a $50 ,000 bounty on his head that's bringing people from out of state

trying to kill Al Capone.

One of the tactics that was exclusively a Chicago thing was created by the

Northsiders. The marriage of the Thompson submachine gun to...

An eight -cylinder automobile.

Absolutely devastating.

So with this bounty on his head, Al Capone had an entourage of people who

travel with him, whose sole responsibility was to look out for

would place him in danger. And that day came in a little restaurant in Cicero,

near Southside Chicago.

And Capone's eating when all of a sudden a bunch of cars pull up.

The windows come down, and men with Thompson submachine guns start spraying

building with bullets.

More than 1 ,000 bullets were fired at Capone that day. And miraculously, this

guy is able to escape unharmed.

It's important to realize that even though these two men loomed so large,

was an era where petty criminality was everywhere.

Everybody in Chicago seemed to be on the take at this time.

The city's police force was notoriously corrupt.

Even Chicago Mayor William Hale Thompson was rumored to be in Al Capone's

pocket.

The public is kind of willing to turn a blind eye to some of this stuff. A lot

of people felt that, you know, These guys can kill each other off. We don't

really care. Just keep our booths flowing and keep us out of the

All that changes on the morning of February 14th, 1929, Valentine's Day.

There is a meeting in a garage on the north side, and there's seven members of

the gang that are waiting for their boss, George Bugs Moran, to meet them.

According to eyewitnesses in the neighborhood, they see a Cadillac pull

four or five men jump out of this Cadillac, two dressed in police

they knock on the door of the garage.

It's very likely that the seven men assembled in the garage thought that

was just a simple police shakedown.

This was something that gangs were used to at that time, and frankly...

If it's true that they owned the police through bribes and other kinds of

things, it wasn't too stressful to go through the process, get arrested and

bailed out and the charges to be dropped. But this time it was much

So they are told, get against the wall, put your hands up. The ones who had

weapons have their weapons relieved of them.

The men from the Cadillac unsheathe their overcoats.

Pull out Thompson submachine guns and shotguns, and then they open fire.

There's 70 shots fired.

According to eyewitnesses, the perpetrators get back into the Cadillac

feed off.

People in the neighborhood know something has gone on. They've heard

shots. So a few brave souls go into the garage and discover what is

clearly a horrific crime scene.

Newspapers across the country pick up the story, dubbing it the Valentine's

Massacre.

They published incredibly gruesome images of this violence. And if you can

imagine, before this... People knew about the crime and the violence of the

underworld, but it was very much sort of below the radar of what most people had

in their face. Then all of a sudden you have this brutal act of violence and

pictures of it in the newspaper.

The usual suspects are rounded up, but no arrests were ever made that stuck.

Even though we're approaching a century since the Valentine's Day massacre, it

is still one of the coldest cases, one of the most intriguing mysteries when it

comes to crime in American history.

There's this immediate public outcry for justice.

People want to know who did this and to see them brought in. But no one can

really figure it out.

Rivalry between Bugs Moran and Al Capone is legendary.

So when a group of Moran's men gets gunned down so violently, minds

go to one name.

The person with the most to gang when it comes to the death of Moran and the

gutting of his gang is obviously Al Capone.

Many people are certain that it's him because he is rumored to have already

initiated, if you will,

Maybe 200 people in Chicago, including a handful of men who have been Bugs

Moran's predecessors.

Bugs Moran is truly the only man standing in Al Capone's way of taking

control of Chicago.

Even though Bugs Moran wasn't in the garage during the morning of the

it completely hobbled Moran's operation.

Moran himself publicly accuses Capone of orchestrating the massacre.

As one would expect, Bugs Moran blames Al Capone and says words to the effect

of, only Capone killed like that.

Many politicians and many people of note around the United States already

believe that Al Capone is capable of doing anything. And so they tend to

over into siding with Bugs Moran's interpretation of the event.

Herbert Hoover had just been elected president. In his campaign, he spoke

bringing law and order back to the United States.

And there was a focus on Capone. It was determined that he was a public enemy.

In true Capone fashion, the notorious mob boss seems to have the perfect

On the morning of the massacre, Capone is in Florida.

He's living in his home on Palm Island in Miami.

And that morning, he has a meeting with the DA to talk about his involvement

with another murder, something that had happened the year before.

It's impossible to put Capone at the scene of the massacre if he's clearly

talking to law enforcement agents in Miami.

Just because his alibi eliminates him from pulling the trigger, it doesn't

eliminate his involvement.

It's very possible he still pulled the string.

Some people believe the fact that Al Capone has such an airtight alibi that

was part of the setup and probably means more so that he ordered the hit at a

time when he knew he would not be there.

So typically, part of the Capone plan was for there to be nothing that could

him. to the event, no matter how many layers he needed to use.

Even if he had shot someone or beaten somebody's head in, he was never there.

This was a highly planned, organized hit.

And that sort of lends to the theory that it was put together by organized

crime. But even though a good majority of people did think that this was a

Capone -orchestrated hit, it's not the only theory.

It's the morning of February 14th, 1929.

Some Chicago residents have just heard a barrage of gunfire ring out at 2122

North Clark Street on gangster Bugs Moran's turf.

As crowds gather outside the garage, Sergeant Thomas J. Luftus is the first

policeman on the scene.

Sergeant Loftus came in and saw this incredibly gruesome sight.

As he checked each of the bodies to see if there was anyone alive, he came

across one particular individual who'd been shot 14 times but was still

to life, a guy named Frank Gusenberg.

Sergeant Loftus leaned down and he whispered to him, who did this to you?

Gusenberg said, the cops did it.

Sergeant Loftus does try to get more information out of Gusenberg, and

Gusenberg says, you know, take me to the hospital. I need to be seen by a

doctor. And he never gives away anything else.

Although a lot of people immediately jumped to the conclusion that Capone was

involved, one story is about Gusenberg's words, as well as the fact that

eyewitnesses saw people dressed in police uniforms coming in a Cadillac

looked like a police -issued vehicle.

People start to question, and there are theories that maybe Chicago police were

involved.

There are real elements of this crime scene that support this theory that cops

did it. Some of the guys that ran out of the car were wearing police uniforms.

And the Cadillac in which these guys drove up was of the sort that the police

would outfit for use. It also had a weapons rack on the back, which was

something only the police had.

The accusation that corrupt police carried out the Valentine's Day massacre

comes directly from a member of law enforcement.

Frederick Hilleway, who was the Chicago Assistant Prohibition Enforcement

Administrator, a very long title.

holds a press conference the next day, and he's quite direct.

He says, gangsters did not do this.

Cops did it, which gets the press's attention immediately, and he said,

the day, we'll be giving you the name of the cops involved.

One thing he stated to emphasize this point, that it was easily rogue cops, is

that they had the perfect guy.

when it came to their misdeed, this very, very public war between the Capone

organization and the Moran organization.

This shocking allegation makes headlines across the country.

But there was no second press conference.

And the next day, Filaway has been moved to another district.

There are so many corrupt law enforcement officers in Chicago during

that people don't find this very hard to believe. But Chicago police claim that

there is no proof of this. They say that the police uniforms that eyewitnesses

saw were red herrings, that these were probably imposters. And there are a

number of hitmen throughout the Midwest that use police uniforms in order to get

away with their crimes.

The idea that someone might have gone to the length to soup up a car or make

uniforms is not as ridiculous and as far -fetched as it might sound. It would

have been pretty easy for someone with the connections to come up with really

authentic looking police uniforms.

shut down their internal investigation almost immediately. They are not

considering their own, and they make it very clear to the public that they don't

want them considering police either.

By shutting down their internal investigation so quickly, it leaves

a bad taste in their mouth, and there's a lot of room for speculation.

Three months after Chicago's notorious Valentine's Day massacre, the

investigation goes cold.

But then, 20 miles away in the town of Hammond, Indiana, there's a gruesome

discovery.

Police come across an abandoned car, and they look inside, and there are two

guys, horribly murdered.

They were just shot. They're completely disfigured.

Then they found a third guy lying on the ground. Same thing. If anything, it

was... even more brutal than the Valentine's Day massacre.

The investigators are able to identify who these three butchered men were, John

Scalise, Alberto Anselmi, and Joseph Gunta.

Even hardened coroners are absolutely dumbstruck by this thing because it

like these three men have been bludgeoned with what appeared to be

bats. Nose is broken.

Eyes bludgeoned, faces going both directions simultaneously.

They're almost unrecognizable.

The three men had noted ties to Capone. Junta was one of his henchmen, a hitman,

and Anselmi and Scalise were known as the Sicilian murder twins.

The murder twins were made mafia men who came to Chicago and they were Al

Capone's favorite contractors.

They would rub the bullets in garlic, so if the hole didn't kill you, the

infection would.

In 1925, both John Scalise and Alberto Anselmi had taken part in a failed

attempt on Moran's life.

So there's history there. People had already connected these men to the

massacre. They were questioned after the crime.

Scalise and Anselmi were actually charged at one point, although there

isn't enough evidence to pin the crime on them.

But now, three months after the massacre...

The same gangsters have turned up dead.

So these men turning up dead in the way in which they were killed, it's so

brutal. It makes the authorities in Chicago start to say, hey, maybe these

people were involved with the Valentine's Day massacre and they were

the perpetrators. And this is the retaliation for that.

Some newspaper reports indicated that Bugs Moran believed these were the men

had carried out the Valentine's Day massacre, and maybe this is comeuppance

that. Another theory is that this was almost a sacrifice that Capone made to

make peace with Moran. In the months between the Valentine's Day massacre and

the Hammond murders, there is this moment where there are peace talks

Moran and Capone and other organized crime figures.

This much violence, this much attention from the police, from the press, it is

not good for business. And so as bitter as the rivalry between Capone and Moran

is, they know that it might actually serve them to kind of call a halt to

hostilities.

Everybody wants peace, but Bugs Moran won't even come to the table unless the

Southsiders turn over.

In Salmi, Scalise, and Junta. He won't even attend any meetings, and so there's

not going to be any peace.

This is clearly personal for Bugs Moran. He wanted these guys gone because he

felt that they were responsible for the massacre.

So, funny enough, just five days after the Indiana murders, we not only have a

peace conference, we have a peace conference that involves every big -time

gangster in the United States, including Capone and Moran.

So did Capone give the green light to kill these guys to settle the score?

Possibly.

As Americans are sort of getting used to the idea that Bugs Moran had called for

the elimination of these three men outside Hammond, Indiana, the Chicago

publishes an article that says, no, it wasn't Moran. It was Al Capone.

According to the story, Capone arranges for a dinner at the Plantation

Restaurant just outside Hammond, Indiana.

And Capone shows up with two objects, which most people think are large

decanters of champagne.

When he pulls away the tissue paper, it's two large clubs.

Capone used those clubs to beat these men senseless and then shot them in the

head.

Capone killing his own associate is... Not all that uncommon in gangland

Chicago.

And there are these rumors that Galise and Selmy and Junta are starting to grow

a little too big for their britches.

Capone has been in hiding for so long and he's living primarily in Florida.

So there's this potential that maybe these three men are leading a revolt

in Chicago.

They're trying to take over the South Side gang.

And if that's the case, Capone's not going to let that happen.

It's also possible that he was willing to sacrifice a few of his men in order

broker peace with Moran. In reality, all of these things could be true.

If these three men were involved in the massacre, that goes with them to their

grave. But it's not long before another mobster comes under suspicion.

It's December 1929, nearly a year.

since seven of gangster Bugs Moran's associates were gunned down in the

Valentine's Day massacre.

And the case is still unsolved.

By now, the tide is turning against gangsters and the rampant violence they

cause. But without any hard evidence, investigators still can't crack the

Then, they get what might be their biggest break yet.

In December, in the same year of the Valentine's Day massacre in Michigan,

about 100 miles north of Chicago, a man was driving his vehicle when he was

involved in a collision.

A patrol officer who happened to be in the area witnessed the accident and

ordered both of the men to come to the police station.

The policeman jumps on the running board of one of the vehicles, and as they're

approaching the police station, they come up to a stoplight.

And when they're fully stopped, the driver of this vehicle pulls out a

and shoots the policeman three times.

Knocks him off the running board and crashes his car.

And gets out and runs away.

When the authorities go through the abandoned vehicle, they find documents

regarding the ownership. And it is registered to a guy named Fred Dane.

So using these documents, they go to the home of Fred Dane, and they find

something that they've never seen before, certainly not in the small town

Joe's.

They discover a cache of automatic weapons, two Thompson submachine guns,

grenades, shotguns. And along the way, they recover some physical evidence.

fingerprints that they're able to compare and they learn at that point

Dane is actually a man named Fred Killer Burks.

Burks. was actually kind of a sole entrepreneur working on his own,

for the mob, sometimes for himself. But he had a beef with Bugs Moran because it

was Moran's men who actually hijacked some of his illegal shipments of

costing him a lot of money. And with that came, in his opinion, a desire to

commit homicide.

Not only did Burke have a motive to strike back at Moran, he clearly had the

means. He has a closet full of weaponry, including the same kind of weapons that

were used in the massacre.

The police enlisted the help of this incredibly brilliant scientist named

Goddard. They asked Goddard if it was possible to compare the bullets

at the scene of the Valentine's Day massacre.

with bullets fired through the Thompson submachine guns in Burke's house.

Inside of a barrel of a gun are these things called lands and grooves that

create kind of a circular motion.

Calvin Goddard wondered if he could scientifically examine bullets and see

they came from the same gun, thinking that those lands and grooves might

actually be like a fingerprint, so to speak, that it would be very

characteristic of just that weapon.

Calvin Goddard examines the guns found at Fred Killer Burke's house, along with

bullets recovered from the Valentine's Day Massacre.

Goddard does his testing, and he reaches a stunning conclusion.

All seven men killed in the Valentine's Day Massacre were shot with those two

Thompson submachine guns found in the closet of Fred Killer Burke.

And this is really the first significant use of forensic ballistics, and it will

become an incredibly important science.

Killer Burke goes on the run for nearly a year. So he kind of becomes public

enemy number one, and he actually becomes the subject of a lot of true

stories that are being published.

And then a man in Green City, Missouri, reads a story about Killer Bert in one

of these true crime magazines.

And he realizes that one of America's most wanted men resembles a guy who's

living next door to him.

The neighbor phoned in a tip.

And he says, I think your guy is over here. I think he's my neighbor. Come

a look.

And officers did just that, and they found Fred Killer Burke hiding in a

farmhouse, and he was taken into custody without incident.

So officers have Burke in custody, and they're very much concerned about making

sure that the charge of having killed one of their own sticks.

And so they're much more preoccupied with those charges than they really are

about who killed a couple of gangsters.

And witnesses can't identify him from the Valentine's Day massacre.

He's already serving life for having killed a police officer, and you can't

serve life more than once. And so it just kind of really goes by the wayside.

Four years later, however, more evidence emerges connecting Fred Killer Burke to

the massacre.

A bank robber named Byron Bolton says he's got new information on the

Valentine's Day massacre.

He says Burke was the gunman and that he knows because he was a lookout there.

Most importantly, Bolton says that the guy who ordered the hit was Al Capone.

Bolton's claim makes headlines, but immediately it has holes in it.

Two of these men that Bolton fingers both have airtight alibis. And then J.

Edgar Hoover says, this is not true.

Bolton is just making up a story in order to look like he's cooperating to

reduced sentence.

Ultimately, the authorities don't act on Bolton's allegation, leaving Fred

Burke's involvement with the massacre unresolved.

Burke dies in prison without ever telling what happened, either on

Day or anything surrounding the weapons.

send him to prison, where his health deteriorates so badly that he finally is

released and returned to his home, and he later dies.

In keeping with the mob code of silence, Al Capone took the secret to the grave.

It remains a mystery exactly why Bugs Moran's men were gathered in a Chicago

garage on the morning of Valentine's Day, 1929.

But there's at least one clue that leads historians to believe this was an

important meeting.

We may never know exactly why Moran's men were gathered in the garage that

but we know that they were all dressed well. One even had a carnation in his

lapel.

Valentine's Day, so maybe they're dressed up for that, but it's more

they were there dressed up for their boss, believing that this is going to be

business meeting.

But Moran does not show up at the garage that day.

Moran's absence and the lack of specifics about the meeting's purpose

to suggest an unconventional theory.

The fact that Moran wasn't at the garage that day casts suspicion in his

direction. There are questions that...

He calls this meeting, and yet he's so late that he's not there.

Did he have ulterior motives?

The thing that's so intriguing is Bugs Moran was supposed to be in that

and he never came. In fact, he later would only say that he pulled up a

bit late, and he noticed the police car and the police officers walking in. So

he went.

and sat in a nearby coffee shop as the murders unfolded. Essentially, he called

the meeting, and then he sat back in the wings and watched what happened.

Many have theorized that Moran may have done this to do a little house cleaning,

that he might have had leaders within his organization that were starting to

carve a new pathway. Maybe there was some infighting that was going on, or

perhaps... They were colluding to take over the organization and take it away

from Bugs Moran.

He had some rogue members of his organization, the Gusenberg brothers.

Frank and Peter were not always doing what he told them to do. They were his

hitmen, his key mufflement.

But Peter in particular had gotten into the habit of pulling off what really

were... petty crimes. One example that the press liked to write about is that

robbed two very well -dressed women and stole their jewelry with $14 ,000, which

is an enormous amount of money in the 1920s. And then a really bizarre case,

tries to shake down a stockbroker.

Unaware, this fellow had a gun, and the guy began shooting his gun at Peter

Gusenberg, this tough, tough Bugs Moran hitman, and he runs away.

And to Moran, this is unacceptable.

All of these incidences with Peter Grusenberg make the Northside gang look

a laughingstock, and Moran might have gotten fed up.

People who are critical of this theory say that it's unlikely that he would

taken out so many of his own men just to send a message to two.

He's hobbled his own organization, if you believe this theory.

After the Valentine's Day massacre, Moran's organization started to

Moran tried to hang on to his position as a mob boss, but he quickly was being

recognized by others in the criminal world as someone who couldn't perform

longer. He made attempts to join other mob organizations, and they simply said,

your time has passed, and kind of brushed him off.

By the 1940s, Moran's nearly broke, and after being arrested for robbery and

mail fraud, he dies in prison.

in 1957.

We will never know if Moran actually killed his own men, but it definitely

explain why he never showed up.

In 2010, Al Capone biographer Jonathan Eag discovers a 75 -year -old

letter in the FBI archive.

The document, dated 1935, six years after the Valentine's Day massacre, is

addressed to the agency's young director, J.

Edgar Hoover.

This is a letter written by Frank Farrell, and he tells the director that

wants truly to solve the St. Valentine's Day massacre, he should look into the

fatal shooting of William Davern.

He says that in November of 1928, William Davern, the son of a police

was in a Northside pub that was known as a gangster hangout. And he got into a

skirmish with some people from Bugs Moran's crew, and he wound up beaten,

and left four dead.

He's able to make it to a firefighter's call box, and he calls in this crime.

He's taken to the hospital, and he lives for several weeks, but he does not tell

anyone who shot him, with the exception, according to this letter, of his

cousin, a man named William White, more commonly known as Three -Fingered Jack.

Three Finger Jack is a lifelong criminal in Chicago.

He knows all of the North Side gangsters.

He's been in a number of stick -ups, big heists of payrolls and things of this

nature, but he also has a hot temper and he's been known to get really, really

violent when necessary, particularly when it comes to family pride. When it

to his cousin, he swore vengeance.

Three -Fingered Jack had done some work with Moran's men, the Gusenberg

brothers. Back in 1926, Three -Fingered Jack and his crew, including the

Gusenbergs, had robbed a factory of $80 ,000.

When one of them snitched, Jack and another guy dressed up as policemen and

murdered the snitch in his sleep.

Of course, that detail links directly back to the Valentine's Day massacre

multiple people saw the perpetrators dressed up as police before shooting up

place.

Three -Finger Jack knows plenty of crooked cops, including his uncle, who

only is a retired cop, but also the father of his murdered cousin, who can

easily put him in touch with all of the things they need when it comes to fake

police uniforms and the like. And so the plan appears to be that he will tell

Moran to send all of his guys and himself over to the garage for another

And the result is...

all of these men being killed.

Coincidentally, the location of the Valentine's Day Massacre, 2122 North

Street, is the exact same location where Three -Fingered Jack had done business

with the Moran gang previously. So if he summoned them to that location, they

would not have thought twice about it.

When you look at the sheer brutality of the Valentine's Day Massacre, it doesn't

feel random. It feels very personal. It feels like...

They were really trying to send a message.

So if this were a revenge killing for someone having killed the son

of a police officer, it would make sense why officers would then look the other

way.

Is there any evidence whatsoever to link Three Finger Jack to this shooting?

Well, one of the witnesses said... You know, the driver of the black Cadillac

looked like he was missing a finger. So maybe there is some validity to this,

but there is no genuine follow -up. In part because Three Finger Jack had been

arrested. He was incarcerated on the day of Valentine's Day Massacre. Maybe he

bribed the police to let him out. That's highly unlikely.

So even this theory that Frank Sherrill comes up with, like all the others, has

some holes in it.

Ultimately, Hoover doesn't act on Farrell's tip.

Some believe it's because Three -Fingered Jack was an informant for the

And it would make sense that if Three -Fingered Jack is able to toss them a

or two, bad activity by other gangsters, that they might look the other way. I

don't know how much value they really put on the life of somebody who was

involved in the kinds of things that the Northside gang...

members were involved in.

Maybe having them executed wasn't really causing any heartburn for law

enforcement at that time.

When it comes to Three Finger Jack, we'll never know as he was shot in 1934.

They took all of his secrets to the grave with him. The reason that so many

gangland secrets have...

stayed secret, and probably always will, is because there's always the

implication, if not the out -and -out threat, of retaliation. It is assumed

it is demanded that one be silent.

It's so hard to get to the bottom of this case because this is a world in

dishonesty is part of everyday activity, in which everybody's corrupt. Everybody

has a side deal. People die very young.

Violence eliminates people who might have shared something later in their

And so I think that it is really difficult to ever really get a handle on

happened that day.

Two principles in this story. Bugs Moran and Al Capone lived several years after

the Valentine's Day massacre.

Capone, he would die at home almost two decades after the shooting.

And Bugs Moran survived almost three decades after what happened in the

that day. And what's intriguing about both these cases, no one was curious

enough to ask either Capone or Bugs Moran.

What really happened? If they did ask them, no one ever recorded what the two

men said. So we're left with an extraordinary mystery about America's

case almost a century late.

Chicago in 1929 was so dominated by gangsters and corrupt officials.

It's no wonder the truth about the Valentine's Day massacre remains

rumors and secrecy.

Everyone had an agenda.

one that often had nothing to do with justice.

But interest in the most famous gangland hit of all time is still intense.

Perhaps new evidence will emerge as we approach the massacre's 100 -year

anniversary. For now, though, it remains America's coldest case.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.